NSA “Systematically Moving” All Its Data to the Cloud

Megalith

Megalith

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The NSA is moving most of its data to a cloud computing environment dubbed the “Intelligence Community GovCloud,” effectively pooling all information collected into a single “data lake.” This will make it much easier for analysts to find correlations between data stemming from different repositories.

Smithberger said the IC GovCloud environment accelerates the analytic work humans can do by employing machine learning and algorithms. Data ingested by NSA has been meta-tagged with bits of information, including where it came from and who is authorized to see it, which ensures analysts only immerse themselves in intelligence they’re cleared to see.
 
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Jim Kim

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So you're saying they are moving the data ftom a server, where it resides now, to a server. Or are they just hooking up DSL with a netgear router?
 
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In other words, instead of the NSA bothering to capture all the data that flows on the Internet itself in real-time and storing it on the 18 floors beneath the ground that are filled with 27 million hard drives (and counting) doing all that, someone at the NSA decided "Why bother, let's just say everything out there belongs to us now and be done with it."

Capture it all, indeed. ;)
 
Zarathustra[H]

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Megalith said:
This will make it much easier for analysts to find correlations between data stemming from different repositories.
Click to expand...

It will also make it easier for bad actors to steal it.

The only way to prevent data theft is to not collect it in the first place.

Fuck the NSA.
 
jojo69

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aai0I2D.gif
 
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Delicieuxz

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I'm guessing this US intel cloud network will be managed by Jeff Bezos / Amazon, and that one of the repositories its data will stem from is the Amazon site, or the servers that host the virtual profiles that Amazon makes of all its customers. Microsoft's virtual profiles for all Windows 10 owners might be another of its repositories.
 
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Galvin

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Now we make a movie called The Lake. Takes place 100 years from now.

Can't wait till precrime is invented
 
NoOther

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Zarathustra[H] said:
It will also make it easier for bad actors to steal it.

The only way to prevent data theft is to not collect it in the first place.

Fuck the NSA.
Click to expand...

Actually the opposite is true, they will have more data protections in place, and instead of having to independently patch and secure thousands of disparate systems, they just have to patch and secure a more homogeneous environment.
 
NoOther

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BloodyIron said:
USA is the police state. Good luck proving you innocence when they can just declare you a terrorist and move you to Guantanamo Bay. Stripping you of all your "rights".
Click to expand...

Ummm, okay? Got proof that happens regularly and more importantly proof that people are moved to Guantanamo Bay for political dissidence which is commonly the impetus behind the police state?
 
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Spidey329

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"Analysts would be required to use the paddle boat to obtain data that was sourced for them from the lake."


All this talk of clouds and lakes made me think the NSA is running a summer camp and those snobby camp CIA f***s across are going to cheat to win the intercamp spy Olympiad.
 
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Sycraft

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Burticus said:
Yep, the "cloud" is just servers somewhere else. I'd like to meet the person responsible for creating that term and punch them in the face. "This punch is from the Cloud!" Someone else's fist! LOL
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It's all the fucking rage with management dipshits, hence why the NSA is marketing this as a "cloud" thing when by any useful definition of the word "going to the cloud" means "outsourcing your data to another company" which of course they aren't doing. It has gotten to the point where there are terms like "private cloud", "hybrid cloud" and "near cloud" all basically meaning "Keeping some or all of your shit on prem, but pretending like you are in the cloud."

I'm really hoping the buzz, hype, and frenzy die down soon. There's nothing wrong with outsourcing services when it makes sense, but right now management type salivate at the mention of the word "cloud" and think "everything should be in the cloud, even though I have no idea what that is!"

I swear that this onion video is accurate to how most people think about the cloud at this point.
 
Zarathustra[H]

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NoOther said:
Actually the opposite is true, they will have more data protections in place, and instead of having to independently patch and secure thousands of disparate systems, they just have to patch and secure a more homogeneous environment.
Click to expand...

Many disparate smaller systems can fly under the radar, and if they are compromised, there is less data lost.

Sure, it is less work to manage one large system, but by putting all your eggs in one basket, you become a much larger target, and no system is unhackable.
 
jojo69

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Zarathustra[H] said:
Many disparate smaller systems can fly under the radar, and if they are compromised, there is less data lost.

Sure, it is less work to manage one large system, but by putting all your eggs in one basket, you become a much larger target, and no system is unhackable.
Click to expand...


seriously

this hack will probably be the end of the nation state model as we know it...long popcorn
 
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Grimlaking

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It's a private cloud that multiple intelligence agencies can access to correlate and sift through data and make more meaningful linked discoveries? Yea.. right until one of those other services has a service that provides some kind of data aggregaor and then is hacked and then bad actors have access to the full cloud of data and I am sure it won't take long to defeat the meta-tagging access privileges they are using.
 
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BloodyIron said:
USA is the police state. Good luck proving you innocence when they can just declare you a terrorist and move you to Guantanamo Bay. Stripping you of all your "rights".
Click to expand...

if you wound up at Gitmo it would be for good reason and they would know within a short time if you really were innocent, or not (they are not stupid) and if not ... dum da dum dum.

Ever notice how ISIS was using MILITARY HARDWARE and so was Iraq, USA, etc? It's war, not police action. The Media calls it Police Action to keep the Public at bay because they know how stupid the majority of the Public is and if they said it was war the Public would demand it to stop.
 
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Brahmzy

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Good golly. AWS is Skynet and Bezos is Miles Dyson.

It’s happening.
 
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Brahmzy

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But seriously, I cannot believe the amount of massive-scale DOD-type workloads that have moved to AWS recently. Bezos will soon eclipse POTUS as the most powerful man in the world.
 
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Paul Damasco

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NSA "We're tired of having to do security checks on our servers, so lets just move it to the cloud and let someone else do it for us." Man when amazon web servers get hacked we're all screwed...
 
TeeJayHoward

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Current NSA technique:
"Hey, I need intel on Mohammed."
Bank records: Stored locally, look them up with a few clicks.
Shoe size: Stored off-site, call someone, get info delivered.
Favorite food: Stored in a paper written by an intern a decade ago in a filing cabinet somewhere.
Known associations: Stored in the associate's files, which are on servers in DC, Cali, and TX. Call each agency and retrieve the information.

Future NSA technique:
"Hey, I need intel on Mohammed."
Search query: Mohammed

Personally, I don't see this as an awful thing. It's not like they're going to be storing this info on Backblaze or AWS or something like that. It'll be a unique network, similar to SIPRNet or JWICS. If a foreign agent gains access to it, it's because said agent was sitting in a classified area they shouldn't have been to begin with. The real clusterfuck I see coming is in their tagging system. If they don't set that up right, it'll be a nightmare for the NSA guys trying to do their jobs.
 
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kju1

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Burticus said:
Yep, the "cloud" is just servers somewhere else. I'd like to meet the person responsible for creating that term and punch them in the face. "This punch is from the Cloud!" Someone else's fist! LOL
Click to expand...

Not to be pedantic but well lets be pedantic. Just like weather clouds there are many times of clouds. Youre overly simplifying things when you sa "just servers somewhere else". I dont think its fair to say a Hadoop system is "just servers somewhere else".

If you really bothered to look at the services offered in the various clouds out there you would know that its not just servers on someone elses premises.
 
Retronym

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Paul Damasco said:
NSA "We're tired of having to do security checks on our servers, so lets just move it to the cloud and let someone else do it for us." Man when amazon web servers get hacked we're all screwed...
Click to expand...
AWS is amazingly secure.

Or at least it can be.
 
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